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Discussion Paper
Borrower Expectations for the Return of Student Loan Repayment
After forty-three months of forbearance, the pause on federal student loan payments has ended. Originally enacted at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the administrative forbearance and interest waiver lasted until September 1, 2023, and borrowers’ monthly payments resumed this month. As discussed in an accompanying post, the pause on student loan payments afforded borrowers over $260 billion in waived payments throughout the pandemic, supporting borrowers’ consumption and savings over the last three years. In this post, we analyze responses of student loan borrowers to ...
Real-Time Insights into Consumption Growth Inequality since the Onset of COVID-19
An analysis of households with different spending levels finds that sharp disparities in real consumption growth arising after the onset of COVID-19 have narrowed since 2023.
Journal Article
Excess Savings and Consumer Behavior: Excess Compared to What?
How much accumulated savings do households hold, and what do these savings imply about future consumption? Economists typically consider excess savings when gauging the level of savings that households may use to maintain real consumption as costs rise. Economists have estimated strikingly different levels of currently held excess savings. We highlight the differences between measures of counterfactual savings—that is, the amount of savings households would be expected to hold barring unusual events—and their relevance in computing post pandemic excess savings. Furthermore, we show that, ...
Journal Article
What To Know About the Rise of Services
What should you know about the rise of services over the past 40 years? The services sector now accounts for about 79% of output, 85% of employment, 83% of firms, and 78% of household spending.
Journal Article
The Unequal Effect of Interest Rates by Race, Gender
Household spending typically falls as interest rates rise, but the responses vary by race and gender. Data show that households with mortgages headed by white women cut their spending on durable goods about a quarter percentage point in the three years following a 1 percentage point increase in interest rates. This is a much larger reduction than for households with mortgages headed by white men or Black men or women. The differences highlight the challenge of understanding how policy interest rate changes affect a diverse population.
Speech
The national and regional economy
Remarks at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, New Jersey.
Discussion Paper
Amid the COVID-19 Outbreak, Consumers Temper Spending Outlook
The New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data released results today from its April 2020 SCE Household Spending Survey, which provides information on consumers' experiences and expectations regarding household spending. These data have been collected every four months since December 2014 as part of our Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE). Given the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, the April survey, which was fielded between April 2 and 30, unsurprisingly shows a number of sharp changes in consumers’ spending behavior and outlook, which we review in this post.
Working Paper
Sustainable Consumption and the Comprehensive Economic Well-Being of American Households
This paper develops a comprehensive measure of household economic well-being. The “sustainable consumption” concept accounts for income, assets, debt, transfer payments, and asset returns to estimate a consumption path that balances resources with expenditure over a household’s lifetime. Calculating sustainable consumption using Panel Study of Income Dynamics data demonstrates that it acts as an anchor for actual household spending. Results show that following a period of rapid growth from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, sustainable consumption stagnated on average. In the aftermath ...